Lessons
Harry awoke before anyone else in his year did or at the very least he didn’t see any of his yearmates in the common room, only a few second and third years and one sixth year. Falling onto one of the bean bag chairs and pulling out a random book, he got to reading. It was a rather dry piece, most of which he didn’t understand really but it was enough to keep his mind busy as he waited on everyone else, a tactic he had developed during the long morning hours where he waited for Dudley to wake up because he couldn’t get to school before Dudley had eaten breakfast, which was often several hours after he first woke up.
Absent-mindedly, Harry began humming a tune as he read, though he couldn’t recall where he’d heard it before, it was still quite catchy.
The minutes ran by at a snail’s pace and slowly but surely more and more students filled the common room, some of the older ones having cups of coffee in their hands, though he wasn’t quite sure where they’d got the coffee from. Once all his year mates were present, Milly led them to the great hall for breakfast. The way down was way less complicated than the way up and they didn’t run into any other students ‘til they were in the great hall where a couple of Slytherins and a single Hufflepuff were already eating. As they ate, more and more students came filling into the great hall and so did the teachers. Some’d already been there when they came but some -like Prof. Under- sauntered in at a later time, drowsiness evident in their features.
Harry made some observations rather easily, like how the Griffindors were the loudest and roudiest students or how the Hufflepuffs seemed to be the sleepiest on average. It was also rather clear that the Slytherins and Gryffindors hated each other or how the Ravenclaws seemed on good terms with the Slytherins, whilst the Hufflepuffs seemed closer with the Gryffindors. It was fascinating to observe and Harry found himself so engrossed in his observations that he didn’t even notice Prof. Flitwick handed out the Syllabi, until everyone around him started talking about what classes they would have today. Looking at his own Syllabus, he had charms first and second period, a free period and then Herbology, followed by History.
Just as Milly had told him, in their first Charms lesson they started with learning the wand lighting charm, followed by the wand extinguishing charm, with the first period being dedicated to the theoretical part of the two charms and the latter period for the practical portion. Harry -seeing as he had already practiced the charm at home- had no problem with casting lumos and nox, which earned him 5 points each, though by the end of the lesson everyone managed a good lumos, most also getting down nox, since the two were rather basix charms which didn’t take a lot of effort to perform.
Herbology was pure theory -all of which he’d already known, which earned him 2 points- as was history, so no exciting stuff there. After that, they were free to explore the castle as much as they wanted, which Harry took to heart. For hours he stalked through the corridors of hogwarts, getting lost and only finding his way back to the common room when he was lucky enough to find one of the blue-bronze arrowheads in a deserted corridor which turned out to be right next to the stairs.
The next few days were the same, classes were largely kept theoretically with only minimal spell casting and after lessons, he would roam the halls of Hogwarts, giddy glee filling him whenever he found a secret passageway.
“Are you excited for our first potions lesson today?”, Cho had asked him that morning.
“Sure I am, I heard that Prof. Snape is very strict though”
Cho shrugged it off, “How bad can he be, he is a teacher, isn’t he?”
Very bad. He could be very bad. Snape had started the lesson by questioning a poor Hufflepuff on things that weren’t even in the regular school books. Harry himself only knew the answers because he bought a few extra books with his newfound money- oh forget to mention that but yes, he was rich, apparently. Now back to Snape’s lesson. After he verbally beat down that poor boy, he demanded they brew the burn curing potion with nothing but the instructions in the books, not helping one bit. This -in turn- meant that only a handful of students managed to brew a halfway decent batch and even then, he was very biased. Harry’s potion was the very same shade of red as that of Cho and her partner but his potion was graded worse than theirs for some reason. All in all, this may very well be the only teacher that he truly despised.
The next week, they had flying classes and Harry was a natural. Even with the wobbly school broom he was given, he managed an impressive amount of grace but then again, so did cho, if not more. Both him and cho received 5 points to ravenclaw from Madam Hooch for their grace on the brooms. Flying felt amazing, such freedom, such excitement, Harry felt as though he was made to fly. It hurt his soul, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to fly back home, at the Dursleys’.
Slowly but surely, they learnt more spells over the weeks, some more useful than others, sure but he wouldn’t miss any of it for a million pounds. Magic was the true way of living, the way that power surged through your veins when you cast a spell, the tingling that holding a wand gave you, the warmth one felt in a place so full of magic as Hogwarts, it was fantastic, it was priceless.
Everything was normal and quiet, till eventually Halloween had to roll around…